


Grieving and Grasping

by Hawkbringer



Category: Meet the Robinsons (2007)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Abrupt Ending, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Lewis and Cornelius as different people, Minor Character Death, Possibly Pre-Slash, Toothless old grandpa died, Work Up For Adoption, a few years later, brief mention of jacking off, inventions, prodigy Lewis, retconning the time machine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:20:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25534993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hawkbringer/pseuds/Hawkbringer
Summary: Some years after he thought he'd said goodbye to his friend Lewis for good, Wilbur's resolve crumbles, confronted with the death of his elderly grandpa. Cornelius, his father, who has no memory of ever fighting zombie-hat-people as a child, tries to stop him from going back to see Lewis just for emotional comfort, but Wilbur cannot be stopped. After planting the idea of a dimension-hopping alternate time-machine in young Lewis' head, Wilbur returns to his father's side unchanged, but Lewis from the past won't let this stay the way Wilbur left them. (written 28th july 2016)
Relationships: Lewis | Cornelius Robinson/Wilbur Robinson
Kudos: 7





	Grieving and Grasping

**Author's Note:**

> I think there's a feeling, when you live in a house your dad built (it's always the dad, right?), a feeling of permanency and ownership that isn't really there in houses that were /bought/. I think the death of any of his family would hit him pretty hard. Even, well. It'd be the grandparents first, wouldn't it? Probly Bud, since men tend to die before women. 
> 
> And it would break Corny's heart and everybody would be sad and, hell, Wilbur, not knowing how to deal with his fear and sadness, would do what any teenager might do, and just try to get away. But he has access to a pair of time machines. And his dad /has/ since built more of them. (I get the feeling Corny is not the most constrained-by-practicality-or-fears-of-unintended-consequences inventor.) But he only needs one. 
> 
> Carl drags him away, of course, and they bicker and they talk and Corny finds him in the garage sitting on the flying car's wing staring down at the silent, contemplative, robot manservant (the octopus is the butler, and how that happened, we'll never know) with tears streaming down his face. 
> 
> And he talks with his dad as they walk upstairs towards Wilbur's room, passing paint-explosion antics on the mid-level that bring a small smile to Wilbur's pale, puffy-eyed face. After his dad says goodnight, Wilbur sleeps, but badly. He wakes with a name on his lips, one he hasn't spoken in nearly two years. 
> 
> /Lewis./

His dad made him promise not to take the time machine at any point for that day or the next, but he goes to talk to him during his 'working' hours and asks him what he remembers about Wilbur. 

"I mean from the time we met when you were my age." 

Looking distinctly apologetic, Cornelius replies that he has no memories of meeting Wilbur at that age. As far as he remembers, he suceeded with the memory scanner, got adopted by Lucille and Bud shortly thereafter, and left Yagoobian to fester in his envy and nearly erase his offspring and the entire future he built... largely due to that stupid hat. That has gone missing and cannot be found. Neither he nor Wilbur knows where it is. (goob-focused almost-corny/mike story got written here)

Wilbur blinks, mouth hanging open. "You don't remember going back to see your mother?" 

His dad shakes his head. "I'd never met you, Wilbur. Not before you were born." 

Wilbur rubs his chin, thinking quickly. "Then what you built isn't a time portal. It's a portal to another dimension! Otherwise, you would /definitely/ remember meeting yourself in this time." 

Cornelius thinks it over and agrees with his logic. 

To settle the discussion, they drag out his ancient but lovingly preserved Memory Scanner and watch most of the day of the science fair. Cornelius' eyebrows pull together as he sees his younger self, exactly as Wilbur remembers him, talking swiftly and blindly with a battered Yagoobian, knowing now how badly this day warped him, forever. But the demonstration of the Memory Scanner goes off without a hitch - the toga kid does still trip over a table leg and sends the fire ants flying but no sprinklers go off and no other experiments are ruined. 

They're both stroking their chins in an identitcal manner by the time the newly-dubbed Cornelius sidles out of a car and stands dumbstruck on the sidewalk beside a trunk containing all his worldly possessions, looking at the fixer-upper named Anderson Observatory that would become his home. 

"There's nothing in there that /hints/ that you time-traveled at any point during that day. You don't act like you know something no one else does. You're just nervous and excited as any kid would be. You're not super-naturally confident or anything..." Wilbur muses aloud, confident he's being helpful. 

Cornelius puts out a hand and ruffles his hair, which his teenager /really/ hates, so much effort going into his appearance and all. "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like /you/ were at that age?" 

"Hey!" Wilbur pouts adorably, then takes out a small tube of hair gel from one of his jeans pockets and fixes his 'do. "And, for the record, I /was/, actually. You even bought that I was a time cop from the future for a while! Till you got a good look at the tanning salon coupon," he ended with a mutter. 

Cornelius shot him a glare that wavered at the corners. "Petunia was wondering where that got to." 

Wilbur snorts. "/Yeah/, I'm /sure/ she was." He stands silently for a moment, hands massaging his forearms. It's always been too cold in here for his liking, especially at night. "But, Dad. This /proves/ you have no memories of that day!" 

"Ah, that's true, son," Cor countered, spotting a loophole. "But that doesn't mean it didn't happen." 

Wilbur let his shoulders drop dramatically as he rolled his whole head along with his eyes. "Ugh, same thing, Dad! If there was no alteration to the time stream prior to when you made the machines... Nothing bad seemes to have happened?" 

"I'm okay with not knowing. Are /you/?" His dad looks at him as though waiting for the moment the prey-mouse will bolt. Waiting to snatch the escaping thing. 

Wilbur sighs agitatedly and bounces on his feet to ward off the cold. "Rrhhh.. No! And it's not that I /want/ to know, exactly, I just..." He firms his lips and doesn't look at Cornelius. "I just wanna see him again." 

His dad's concerned eyes still watch him like an owl's. "I'm right /here/, son." And the voice is wrong, the voice is so wrong, and he's too tall now and there are so many things wrong with this picture Wilbur doesn't even know where to /start./ 

"No-/ho/," he shakes his head, starting to hiccup. "You're not, you're really not. You're my /dad/, and I love you, but..." He bites his lip, not sure if this display will make his dad break down and consent, but feeling the need to try anyway. "I need my best friend." 

Tears start to roll down his cheeks and he's getting more upset by the second that his 'emotional' display has spiraled out of his control and he's not sure when he'll stop crying, if he ever really stopped /wanting/ to ever since he heard the news. 

The owl eyes upon him soften then, certain as the boy snarls at his own tears that his son won't flit away and put aside the grieving for a later time, that's he's stuck with it now. There's never been a time Cornelius wouldn't have dropped everything to help his son in need, but the flighty creature before him requires a delicate touch. 

"I know I'm not your best friend anymore, or, maybe I never was..." Wilbur shakes his head, hiccuping and crying and now his nose is running and that makes forebearing an even more difficult task. But he persists, requesting, "But does that mean your old man can't give you a hug?" 

Wilbur looks up, hands still clasped around his biceps, and the idea of hiding beneath that lab coat, nestled up against a steady source of heat is certainly comforting to his discombobulated lizard brain. The final straw that breaks the camel's back comes when he notices the way his dad's eyes have softened, not like a cobra's, but more like a bear's, wide and dumb and totally unduplicitous, and that's exactly what Wilbur needs right now, so he dives forward and tugs himself forward between the halves of his father's white coat. 

(He's still going to ask if he can go visit Lewis, or bring him here, because there's a hole in his heart, and Lewis /would/ help fill it. Cor advises him against it, but Wilbur smirks with /that/ expression on his face and points out that the kid's already got a different future. Why not make it just a little more unique? Well, not too long after that, Lewis comes, and stays for a week, and he and Wilbur plan it meticulously so that he returns to /his/ time literally a few seconds after he leaves.) 

Disoriented and head buzzing, Lewis plunges into his glorified cot beside his scribbling desk, buries his face in the pillow that smells just like /him/ and not /also/ of Wilbur, and jacks off for the first time in 10 days. The orgasm is /glorious/. The next morning, he begins working on a new treadmill design. 

Just imagine Wilbur's surprise when, mere days after he sent Lewis home and truly cried himself to sleep about it, the boy appears in his father's inventing room completely unannounced along with what looks like a beefed-up treadmill. Thankfully, it didn't temporally displace any of Cornelius' inventions. Lewis winces and declares that next time, he'll land it in the garage. 

Cornelius jumps from his seat and is concerned that the first words out of the boy's mouth are about the /next/ time he'll try a fool stunt like take a completely new prototype for a test drive without adequate safety guards. 

Lewis throws him an arch look and reminds him, "I /fixed/ your busted time machine. In a few minutes. While being attacked by hat-zombies. The plans were kind of ingrained into my memory. That, plus, functioning Memory Scanner? Kind of only took me a few months." He frowns then. "I just hope I'm not too late. Where is he?" 

Cor puts a hand on his shoulder. "Wilbur is... well, heck if I know. Er, probably in the garage. Or asleep. It is a Saturday, after all." 

Lewis nods distractedly. "I know. Saturday, June 25th, 2037. Don't worry, I know what I'm doing." He turns a bright grin up to his older counterpart. "I just don't know how it's going to turn out." 

Cornelius puts his hand down, shoulders slumping. "Neither do I. And that worries me. Cornelius-" 

Lewis shakes his head. "It's Lewis. While I'm here. So the family doesn't get confused." 

Cor's eyebrows draw together. "Did they not name you Cornelius Robinson?" 

"They did," he replies, turning the rest of his body towards the descending stairs as though magnetically attracted to the anguish of the greiving teenager. "But it doesn't quite fit yet. Plus, Wilbur calls me Lewis." 

"I don't know if it's a good idea to differentiate so strongly from this future, Lewis." He notes that he immediately adopted the name, though, despite that. "Wilbur might be affected." 

Lewis shakes his head. "I don't think I can affect /this/ Wilbur. After all, that treadmill is a portal to another dimension. After that hat debacle, this timeline split off from my original one, the one where I became /you/. It became an alternate universe, one that /I/ won't experience. But it's also one I've /lived in/. So that path remained open. When Wilbur came back and then brought me forward, then put me back, then returned here, that cross-penetration kept those universes in close contact. That's why he was able to come get me again, in the same ship, that should have only been able to go through time. It remembers the two of us, and where we want to go." He arched an eyebrow at his stunned elder. "Or were you not aware the time-traveling field gets a lot of its accuracy from psychoactive components?" 

"Let me get this straight," Cornelius held his hands up for silence. "I built a time machine, but because you and my son traveled back and forth in it repeatedly, you are both immune to the time-ripple effects /and/ can still access both timelines even though they should be mutually exclusive because the time-warping bands are /psychokinetic/?" 

Lewis blinked at him, eyebrows pushing up into something resembling pity. "No," he answered simply, taking enough steps towards the stairs to allow his hand to grasp the rail. "This isn't my future. You built a dimension-hopping machine. Or, me and Wilbur wanted to be together again so badly that it /became/ one, on its own." He turned fully and began descending. "Try talking to it, the next time you take it out for a spin. It might talk back to you." 

As the blond shock of hair so /perfectly/ like his own disappears out of sight, most likely heading straight for his son's room to /comfort/ him or something equally emotional, Cornelius stands stock still in his own inventing room, having been thoroughly schooled by a 15-year-old version of himself that he does not remember being. He lets out a long breath and decides a nice long cruise around Pangea might be just the thing he needs. He decides to take the red one, hungrily eyeing the new addition to his workroom, but promising himself to save it for later.

**Author's Note:**

> Of all my abrupt endings, this one I perhaps curse the most. This was a really good idea!


End file.
